A Quiet Place (John Krasinski)

[Dead & Messed Up]

I do agree about the jump scares. Too much WHAM.

[Mal]

Regarding point one:

[

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They most likely had sex at the waterfall.

]

Ouch.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Ouch.

[

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Seems scenic to me.

]

[TGM]

I do agree about the jump scares. Too much WHAM.

Honestly, there was maybe one early on that had me worried this was gonna be too jump-scare heavy, but I honestly didn't think it was too bad or even obnoxious at all in that regard. Most of the scares came from just the tension and the atmosphere. This was no Woman in Black.

[Wryan]

I'm perfectly okay with this movie having jump scares. It's baked into the DNA of the thing. "There are monsters that hunt us by sound and we have to be totally silent and on edge almost every moment." That essentially means any startling moment is going to read as a jump scare from circumstance alone. That said, I enjoyed this for what it is. It's running right along the ground instead of flying through the air, but it knows how to be effective at what it wants to do and achieves it, for the most part. Just about the only thing that didn't quite work for me was [

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the son having a panic attack at the river then becoming Dr. Phil at the waterfall

]. Blunt gives an incredible physical performance. I liked the creature design just fine (and don't really see a resemblance to Giger's alien, personally; more like a bat monster with withered wings or something).

So very happy this dude behind us decided to fall asleep and start snoring. And really happy the guy right next to me turned to his gf and offered, [

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"I BET SHE TURNS HER HEARING AID BACK ON AND SAVES EVERYONE."

]. Yes, thank you, my man. Now that Hawking is gone we needed someone to fill the void.

Movie was just what I expected and wanted. I was happy.

[Spinal]

It's the kind of movie that is thoroughly engaging while you're watching it, but then becomes highly frustrating once you stop. I spent most of the movie on edge and immersed in the world, so credit where credit is due. The grain silo scene is the high point for me, a nice set piece where a whole lot of things come together and pay off. Great stuff.

Here's what I didn't like:

[

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Krasinski doesn't sell the father's sacrifice and death. It feels cheap, a bald attempt to play on our heartstrings by having the father sign his love as he awaits his death. It would take a better actor to make this not feel utterly shameless.

And so, after feeling disappointment with this moment, the whole father-daughter relationship unraveled and began to feel utterly shallow and manipulative to me. It felt like everything was written simply to have this contrived sentimental death scene. And after that, I realized it started with the very first scene and it kind of bummed me out.

]

Emily Blunt, not surprisingly, is the highlight and she is used to great effect.

Still, I will never watch this film again because of [

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that god damn nail on the stair.

] Ugh, so horrible sitting and waiting for the inevitable to happen.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Just about the only thing that didn't quite work for me was [

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the son having a panic attack at the river then becoming Dr. Phil at the waterfall

].[spoiler]

That was really laying it on thick.

[

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"But have you told her?"
[barf]

]

[Ezee E]

So, how long until Krasinski does a Marvel or Star Wars movie?

[Henry Gale]

So, how long until Krasinski does a Marvel or Star Wars movie?

It's funny because I had the same thought, since this would be the perfect sort of calling-card movie to suddenly be the director of something like that (even before it made a ton of money this weekend), but it's a more unusual situation considering Blunt turned down the role Black Widow and was also in contention to play Peggy Carter, and of course Krasinski came very close to being Captain America. All oh so many films ago, but just a handful of years back.

But again, because of the ton of money is has now made, I think Krasinski's world of choices has been upgraded to where I feel like he's more likely to use it as an earned pass to get something riskier that he really wants to get made rather than something a studio already has on the docket to slot him into.

[DavidSeven]

I'm perfectly okay with this movie having jump scares. It's baked into the DNA of the thing. "There are monsters that hunt us by sound and we have to be totally silent and on edge almost every moment." That essentially means any startling moment is going to read as a jump scare from circumstance alone.

I think this is mostly true, though I feel there were some cheap moments tossed in that exploited that setup. The bit with the raccoons. Krasinski nabbing his daughter on the stairwell, timed with an unnecessary WHAM on the soundtrack. Those are just a couple instances that I remember clearly. Overall, I do recall thinking the soundtrack scares were just way too pervasive and relied upon unnecessarily. I can live with startling noises that are part of the "set" and the action. At least that stuff is tethered to the plot and atmosphere. For me, the reliance on the "WHAM" button instead distracted from what the film was actually doing well to organically create tension and scares.

[Morris Schæffer]

If this wins Best picture next year it'll be Michael Bay on stage giving an acceptance speech.

But ok, that's a big if.

[Henry Gale]

The thing is, I could reasonably see it happen somewhere. Like for something like Critics' Choice for Best Sci-Fi/Horror film (where Get Out won this past year, despite The Shape of Water also being nominated, and being that ceremony's eventual Best Picture.)

It's kinda like how Shawn Levy produced Arrival and The Spectacular Now. I'm like, "Okay, your status to get things made is earned." (Also Stranger Things, which I don't exactly love, but he even directed solid episodes of. And Kimmy Schmidt too!)

Perhaps next Neal H. Moritz will produce a prestige, awards season arthouse film! Or even Akiva Goldsman and Joel Silver producing a Nicolas Winding Refn movie! Wait.. that actually almost happened with Logan's Run, didn't it?

[Peng]

His enthusiasm for Krasinski (their Benghazi film probably led to this) and this film is pretty fun though (and funny too).

[[ETM]]

Ok, this was pretty dope. I'm not much of a horror fan, and neither is my girlfriend, and the couple we went with even less than us. We all ended up loving it and discussing it for quite a while afterwards. Contrary to some of you, a couple of us came out unconvinced, but discussing the plot points cleared up most of anyone's grievances. I agree on the soundtrack jump scares, though, and I would have loved to have seen at least a short scene on how they still have power, but overall I find that most of the smaller faults are completely forgivable. So glad we went and saw it tonight.

Oh, and our audience was awesome. Only a couple of young idiots who blabbed on a bit, with the rest staying deathly silent for the duration. Even the popcorn munching at the very beginning was incredibly subdued. Even when people were jumping in their seats at the scares, they kind of tried muffling the sounds. It was awesome.

[transmogrifier]

63/100

Expertly crafted, with the entire second half just a string of tension-filled set-pieces.... I enjoyed it very much on that score. But, unfortunately, the desire to have the family fight back at the end just ends up undermining the credibility of the entire premise. There is no way in hell someone had not already figured out that weakness already. Those creatures would have been toast within 48 hours of landing.

[[ETM]]

I think it's [

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not just any frequency that they respond to. The hearing aid doesn't do anything for the girl's hearing, but it amplifies the signal boost that the creatures are using. And it only helps if you're point blank, with the creature listening intently so the head plates are open. By then you're pretty much dead.

]

[Dukefrukem]

Kinda loved this, though I have a billion nit picks on the universe and how one is to survive in said universe. Example: That's great that you have all these little traps and plans and things setup in case of a monster attack, but how did you build all of these things to begin with if your entire life is restricted to a line of sand. Second question: the Military couldn't figure out how to kill these things and it took a basement engineer and a little girl to piece together the puzzle? John Krasinski and Emily Built were still great and that opening scene was tits.

[[ETM]]

Could it be that we're following our heroes in large part because they stumbled across the solution purely by accident? He wasn't fiddling around with that thing to defeat the beasts.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Yeah, this is the paradox of Cruise in War of the Worlds. Why is it that this random man just so happens to witness and escape all these enormous catastrophes by sheer luck? Because if he didn't, we wouldn't be following this story, we'd be following the story of someone who had a similar trajectory that allowed a dynamic story to be told. Some movies weather the paradox better than others.

[Pop Trash]

Yeah, this is the paradox of Cruise in War of the Worlds. Why is it that this random man just so happens to witness and escape all these enormous catastrophes by sheer luck? Because if he didn't, we wouldn't be following this story, we'd be following the story of someone who had a similar trajectory that allowed a dynamic story to be told. Some movies weather the paradox better than others.

It would be interesting to see someone make a Slacker-esque version of these disaster / alien invasion movies where we fully pick-up on another character at the scene when one character dies. This keeps going on over and over for the course of twenty people or so.

[Pop Trash]

Without fully spoiling it, can someone tell me if the ending of this is more, less, or about the same level of stupid as the ending of Shyamalan's Signs?

I'm considering seeing it today.

[Dukefrukem]

Continuity question

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How did they even have electricity on the farm?

]

[StuSmallz]

Continuity question

[

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How did they even have electricity on the farm?

]

I don't remember the film ever explaining that; they had to have had generators somewhere nearby, but with all the incredibly loud noise that would continually create, it would inevitably create problems when living around the monsters. So, it's definitely a bit of a plot hole in the film, but I didn't take note of it while I was in the theater, so it doesn't ruin the overall film for me at all, or anything.

[[ETM]]

They have said in the interviews that the plan was to explain about underground generators, but Krasinski wanted to strip out any and all details which the audience could imagine by themselves, in order to focus on the family.

I can even imagine generators running constantly in a remote location, being almost like the waterfall in terms of noise, and someone refilling them periodically.

[Dead & Messed Up]

It would be interesting to see someone make a Slacker-esque version of these disaster / alien invasion movies where we fully pick-up on another character at the scene when one character dies. This keeps going on over and over for the course of twenty people or so.

I would fully and completely support this idea. This is a very fun idea.

I may have to steal this idea.